Contributed by Jessica Wright
In 2018, it was proven that Alaskans simply wouldn’t tolerate politicians like Bill Walker, who ignored the voices of Alaskans and turned his back on them; by electing a new Governor – Governor Mike Dunleavy – to make his Red Pen Ready, to protect the people and our private sector. Now the focus is on the legislature. In 2019, we were stunned to find out AKLEG is just as troublesome as former Governor, Bill Walker or worse.
Trouble in Juneau:
1. Trouble in the House: In January 2019, Alaskans were expecting a Republican controlled House, since the majority of the elected legislature officials are Republicans, but it didn’t go as planned because many of the Republican legislators are “Name Only” meaning they don’t support their own Party or vote to reflect the Conservative values. After nearly two months of power struggle, they finally formed the House. The supposedly majority Republican legislature became the minority, due to some Republicans switched the Party and the Democrat House Representative, Bryce Edgmon who switched to Independent became the House Speaker so essentially, it’s a Democrat controlled House.
2. Budget war with the Governor Dunleavy: In April 2019, the House Budget Committee had a conflict with Governor’s budget proposal, because they wouldn’t forego former various non-essential programs from the past few years, like medicaid expansion and the epidemic it created. ALKEG would rather cut the Alaskan PFD to keep these costly programs. They are unwilling to follow the statute and would rather use our half of the dividend and lock their half away. They are also unwilling to move funds from the Earning Reserve because they would become legally liable and potentially flagged as criminals taking from their half for their special programs. HB 1005 says all about their intention to raid the fund and take our statutory dividend from $3000 to potentially zero. They don’t want to fund from the Earning Reserve, because the law is clear that 50% dividend based on the original formula is required. If they do anything other than this, they could go to jail. On May 22nd, Edgmon stated, regarding the ever growing, ever blossoming PFD, “We have to find a permanent solution to the annual dividend, we simply have to, we can’t continue to allow it to dominate the political landscape here in Juneau and across Alaska.” meaning they want to change the PFD formula to reduce to a much smaller amount.
3. Trouble in the Senate: On March 28th, the Senate Finance Committee had a wild range of discussions led by Senator Natasha von Imhof, on how to calculate the PFD. They claimed changing the PFD formula is the action they need to take, due to the size of the state budget. In May 2019, Senator Shelley Hughes proposed a bill that would give Alaskans close to full dividend of $3000, but the idea was objected by some fellow senators – their logic behind this was that they were afraid giving Alaskans full dividend will drain the PFD corpus, besides, it’s against their POMV rule (Under SB 26). On June 4th, the Senate bill failed. On June 24th, House Speaker Bryce Edgmon and Senate President Cathy Giessel jointly released the statement,” Funding the 2019 Permanent Fund dividend is critical to Alaskans. However, the long-term issues about the sustainability and the future of the Permanent Fund must be also addressed…” They refused to move their special session to Wasilla on July 8th as Governor Dunleavy had requested.
The Fundamental Problems of AKLEG
1. They passed SB 26. AKLEG intend to break the law by passing these new laws. SB 26 is the prime example of where the legislature is planning to change the PFD formula, even though it was written in the state statute that the PFD is Alaskans’ mineral rights, and government can get their 50% share of the dividend to spend on government programs and the people get their 50% share. Now, with passing SB 26 in place they can have a say on how much Alaskans can get. Interestingly enough, SB 26 has a complicated formula called POMV to calculate how much of our dividend we get each year.
2. They want more control on the PFD. Our current earnings are based on the free market and whether it earns $6K or $3K over five years, as it currently is earning. We need to have the confidence in our dividend program just like the free economy and it will earn well and pay well on a 5-year average. Not just for the government but the private sector. If the earnings were part of a capital budget for infrastructure, then it would be spent as it is earned to help all Alaskans through 50% dividends and 50% government traditional plan benefitting all of the people regardless of whether it earns a dollar or $6K. For us as Alaskans, it protects our economy against the whims of government and secures the private sector growth into the future.
3. They refuse to listen to their constituents. Most of Alaskans do not wish to see any changes in the PFD but AKLEG stubbornly wants to “do something about it” in the name of budget sustainability, but in reality, they should simply cut their bloated budget, which some find that it’s difficult to adjust to, since they were accustomed to the bloated budget during the Walker Administration.
4. They refuse to follow the Governor’s order. According to the state statue (AS 24.05.100), the Governor can assign a location to have legislature hold a special session, but they refused by saying, “…We believe the legislature should call itself into session. We intend to hold floor sessions in Juneau, the seat of government established in the Alaska Constitution, and hold most committee hearing in the Anchorage Legislative Information Office.” (statement given by Edgmon and Giessel on June 24th, 2019)
As you can see, the problem of AKLEG is that they think they are above the laws, because they are lawmakers. Their insubordination to the state statues demonstrates their contemptuous mentality. They think they are above the people, even though they are public servants. Lack of transparency is another characteristic of AKLEG. Representative David Eastman points out that in several occasions they held “Closed-Door Meetings” when they don’t want public to hear their discussion and “Secret Voting” when they vote early and unannounced, and by the time he found out about it they were already done voting. Furthermore, AKLEG seems to be on a mission to hold our PFD hostage, by giving themselves the power to change the PFD formula and to spend our PFD corpus money on government spending which is mainly helping special interest groups, not the majority of Alaskans. Alaska… trouble in Juneau is an understatement – It’s more like “crisis in Juneau.”
